The invention relates to radio receivers for receiving vestigial-sideband signals, which radio receivers are used in digital television sets, for example.
Digital communications frequently employ vestigial-sideband (VSB) signals in which the passband response is reduced at carrier frequency. Excluding from consideration a pilot carrier added to the VSB suppressed-carrier-AM digital television (DTV) signals transmitted in accordance with the 1995 standard for digital television broadcasting established by the Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC), the radio-frequency spectrum of the VSB DTV signals exhibits 3 dB roll-off at a carrier frequency 310 khz from the lower frequency bound of the six-megahertz-wide television channels. A problem with VSB signals with roll-off through carrier frequency is that the asymmetry of the modulation sidebands introduces jitter into carrier tracking that is done using variants of the well-known Costas loop. In some digital communications systems the transmitter employs filtering to eliminate modulation sideband energy in the vicinity of the carrier frequency. The ATSC standard does not specifically provide for eliminating modulation sideband energy near the carrier frequency. Instead, a pilot carrier of substantial strength is inserted into the VSB suppressed-carrier-AM DTV signals to reduce the carrier jitter caused by modulation sideband energy near the carrier frequency.
The transient response of synchronous demodulation of VSB signals is notoriously dependent on the roll-off of frequency response through the carrier region in the final I-F signal being synchronously demodulated.
A type of radio receiver design that is employed in digital television sets employs a six-megahertz-wide final intermediate-frequency signal that is offset from zero-frequency by no more than a few megaHertz. This VSB final I-F signal is digitized, converted to a complex digital final I-F signal, and then synchrodyned to baseband using a digital complex multiplier. The digital complex multiplier multiplies the complex digital final I-F signal by a complex digital carrier to recover in-phase and quadrature-phase baseband results of the synchrodyne carried out in the digital regime. The in-phase baseband results are used as symbol code input by the symbol decoder of the DTV receiver. The quadrature-phase baseband results are lowpass filtered, and the lowpass filter response is used to control the frequency and phase of local oscillations used in the down conversion to final I-F signal, implementing a procedure known as bandpass tracking. This type of receiver is more fully described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,449 issued Dec. 26, 1996 to C. B. Patel and A. L. R. Limberg, entitled xe2x80x9cDIGITAL VSB DETECTOR WITH BANDPASS PHASE TRACKER, AS FOR INCLUSION IN AN HDTV RECEIVERxe2x80x9d, and assigned to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,449 describes the carrier of the final I-F signal being below an upper sideband that is synchronously detected in the digital regime to recover baseband symbol code. Such final I-F signal is the result of a downconversion in which a very-high-frequency (VHF) intermediate-frequency signal is heterodyned with local oscillations of a VHF frequency below the VHF I-F signal frequency band. A final I-F signal with the carrier of above a lower sideband is the result of a downconversion in which a very-high-frequency (VHF) intermnediate-frequency signal is heterodyned with local oscillations of a VHF frequency above the VHF I-F signal frequency band. This is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,372 issued Aug. 19, 1997 to C. B. Patel and A. L. R. Limberg, entitled xe2x80x9cDIGITAL TV DETECTOR RESPONDING TO FINAL-IF SIGNAL WITH VESTIGIAL SIDEBAND BELOW FULL SIDEBAND IN FREQUENCYxe2x80x9d, and assigned to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,372 describes the final I-F signal with the carrier above a lower sideband being synchrodyned to baseband in the digital regime to recover baseband symbol code.
A VSB signal is downconverted to a double-sideband amplitude-modulation final intermediate-frequency signal that is subsequently detected to generate a baseband demodulation result. The carrier of the final intermediate-frequency signal has a carrier offset from zero-frequency, which carrier offset exceeds the highest modulating frequency of the VSB signal and is adjusted to a prescribed carrier offset value.
The downconversion to the DSB AM I-F signal is accomplished in certain embodiments of the invention by heterodyning the VSB signal with a heterodyning signal essentially consisting of first and second frequency components. The first frequency component of the heterodyning signal is lower in frequency than the carrier of the VSB signal by an amount equal to the carrier offset value prescribed for the final I-F signal. The second frequency component of the heterodyning signal is higher in frequency than the carrier of the VSB signal by an amount equal to the carrier offset value prescribed for the final I-F signal. In preferred ones of these embodiments of the invention, the heterodyning signal is generated by a balanced modulator providing suppressed-carrier amplitude-modulation of oscillations supplied from a controlled local oscillator. The modulation of these local oscillations by the balanced modulator is in response to a modulating signal of a frequency equal to the carrier offset value prescribed for the final I-F signal. There is automatic frequency and phase control (AFPC) of the local oscillations that the controlled local oscillator supplies. The AFPC is responsive to the departure of the carrier of the final I-F signal from its prescribed value of offset from zero frequency. The DSB AM final I-F signal is demodulated using an in-phase synchronous detector for recovering baseband symbol code and a quadrature-phase synchronous detector for developing AFPC signal for the controlled local oscillator.
The downconversion to the DSB AM I-F signal is accomplished in other embodiments of the invention by downconverting the VSB signal conventionally, to generate a VSB signal including a carrier frequency offset from zero frequency by an amount greater than the bandwidth of the VSB signal. The downconverted VSB signal is digitized. Then, the digitized downconverted VSB signal is multiplied by a second harmonic of the carrier to generate another VSB signal, and the two digitized VSB signals are added together to complete generation of the DSB AM signal in the digital regime.